Gesellschaft
by Novocain
Summary: .:This is how they did it all wrong:. Written for AlinaLotus. AU


**gesellschaft**

. ... .

Ginny is.

Ginny is twenty-five years old and too bitter for her peach complexion and bright hair. Ginny is harsh in her viciousness, trying for kind and almost getting there before coming up short - sharpness out of nowhere with forced evenness and great frustration. Ginny is - Oh. Backtrack. That is what she is. She is full of frustration. Pointless frustration.

Ginny is.

Ginny is a lost member of the Order and never really fought. Ginny is the one who was there for every ribcage-hollowing loss and newfangled desperation that wasn't actually new at all, the one who was still never really in the midst of the action, too sheltered by her family and Harry. Ginny is the one most people forget was there at all.

Ginny is lost, suffocating in nothing and breathing bitterness for everything life never was. Broken fairy tales - and Harry was just so disappointing. Disappointing: in emotional connection - and too broken in on himself, too used to being alone to be very open.

Ginny is.

Ginny is a member of a scattered family. Ginny is a veteran of broken ties (flapping in the wind). Ginny is the one who was left behind, still staring in astonishment and fury at the empty kitchen.

Ginny is a writer.

Ginny is very good at pouring soul into her writing. (Tom tom tom i saw today so heartbreaking love you tom tom tom.) Ginny is very good at pouring souls into words, and everyone loves loves loves her work. Ginevra Weasley, writer. Ginny is a writer of fiction, heart-stealing fiction in which she makes her readers fall in love and shatters them bitterly (bitter like red wine, bitter like Ginny).

Ginny is not shattered. Ginny is too hard sharp bitter to shatter. Ginny is even too hard sharp bitter to pour her own soul into her writing. Ginny is instead very good now at pouring other people's souls into it, at listening to life and regurgitating it onto her typewriter.

Ginny is.

Severus is.

Severus is ninety-nine or maybe fifty-five or maybe forty-seven and tired. Severus is forty-seven and tired of running on anger. Severus is tired of running on bitter. Bitterness has long since become his life, and he is tired. He is ready to let go of anger and hatred and grudges and Lily. He is so tired and has been and has decided he is at the point that, yes, he is ready to _forgive himself for Lily_. He is very willing now to lay aside life-long burdens. He has decided that, yes, he is willing to invalidate all of his past actions by _not caring anymore_. It is very refreshing.

Severus is.

Severus is forty-seven and learning how to very professionally not mind anything that ever destroyed his dreams or hurt him or even stung his pride.

Severus is.

Severus is a former spy. Former Death Eater. Former member of the Order of the Phoenix. Former student former son former friend, and Severus is tired of mourning for all of the things that he only ever briefly tasted and loved and spent such a long time performing atrocious acts to protect (to do penance for fucking them up so badly).

Severus is.

Severus is tired.

Severus is.

And this is the point - this is where they meet, out of fucking nowhere and it hasn't been long enough. This is the point.

This is the point.

She is sitting in a mostly empty bar with an entirely empty notebook and a chewed pen that fits the contours of her hand too comfortably. It is early and the place is a dive - the kind of dive that has cheap posters on the peeling, disgusting walls and a lot of low lighting just to hide how filthy it is. The patrons don't notice through the firewhiskey vision anyway.

But Ginny is not drunk. She is sitting and staring into space and trying to find that one sentence that will turn into her next book.

She shouldn't be at this bar known to its regulars as Remy's. Her peach complexion and bright hair are jarring in the shades of dirt.

She picks up her pen. Stares at the notebook.

And then the notebook is flying at the wall behind her and the tattooed and muscled bartender is looking her way. The few other patrons ignore the commotion.

"Shot of Jager," she says shortly. "Keep them coming. And a Delia."

The muggle-manufactured Jagermeister is thick and sweet and utterly repulsive. (It is as if she thinks it will teach her how to be too sweet like cough syrup again.) The Delia Potion is a flutter of tastes in the air, sweeping purple waves in her vision.

And then it is an hour later, and she is stumbling through the bar for some reason she has forgotten even as she puts one foot in front of the other. She grabs a nearby chair to steady herself while the walls melt into heat waves around her.

Only it isn't a chair. It is - a shoulder. A thin, broad shoulder covered in black cloth. The man whose shoulder she has grabbed turns around in his chair and looks at her and -

She knows she is too mentally incapacitated when she thinks she sees him smile politely.

And that is what she writes it off as - a hallucination. Snape in this dive with her is a hallucination.

So she actually talks to him.

She starts by saying hi, like this: "Hi, Ace."

"Miss Weasley."

And then she says confidingly, "You know, I wasn't very fond of Alec- Phallic- _Atticus_. And I don't think I ever - think...I - wait. I think don't I ever thanked you for killing him."

His eyebrow arches. "Is that so? Then you are welcome."

"But I didn't thank you. I just stated that I never did - I didn't actually do it," she replies, as if this is the most obvious interpretation to make. She manages to control the order of her words this time, reining in her her tongue from tripping all over itself. This takes concentration, but Ginny is an old hat with Delias.

"Ah. Nevertheless, Miss Weasley."

Ginny frowns at him. "You're not a very accurate hallucination, Ace. You're supposed to be much sharper than you are. But you look enough like him that I'm going to talk anyway. Where have you been?_"_

Snape is nonplussed. "At Hogwarts."

"No, I mean _where have you been_?"

He simply looks at her.

She is staring back at him with suddenly hot, intense eyes that are strangely focused despite her obvious inebriation. She has sunk into a chair at his table, and she says in a low, furious hiss, "Where have you been? Where has everyone been? Where did everyone bleeding go and how do I bleeding get there, huh? Everything is too much and why can't I get the fuck over all of it like everyone else apparently has? _Where did you go and where the fuck have you been?"_

Snape looks at her for another moment. "Miss Weasley," he says, "your hair is too bright."

"Lily never loved you," she replies promptly, abruptly relaxed again. (Because she has heard things and she wants to hurt him like she hurts, sharp and brittle and dull and always.)

But all Snape does is take a sip of his firewhiskey. "Miss Weasley, I could not care less."

"You got her killed."

And an elegant shrug and wave of the hand.

She stares at him incredulously. Her eyes unfocus of their own accord and Snape's arm is sticking out of his forehead, but she stares at him incredulously nonetheless. "Really? That's it?"

"Well, yes," he says, as if he doesn't understand the relevance of this.

"I bring up how you as good as Avada Kedavra'd the woman you loved and all you do is _shrug_? You're really not a very accurate hallucination at all. I need to get a refund on that Delia."

"Well. Yes," he repeats slowly, some of his old sarcasm waving its hat. He ignores the part about illegal potions altogether.

She leans across the table. "How?"

Snape snorts. Snape _snorts_. Snape snorts and throws back the rest of his firewhiskey and stands up. He is a tall man, so it is like he unfolds as he looms carelessly. His face is relaxed and so is the set of his shoulders - he is actually even more imposing in this new fluidity than he was when she was a student.

"How is Potter doing?" he asks as he fastens his cloak.

"I don't know," she says, watching him (with shattersliding vision). "He wasn't anything worth having."

Sharp. Sharp like scissors, casual sharpness because the sharpness is an essential part of scissors.

There is a low, smooth laugh that she has never heard before, and then Snape is gone.

Ginny watches the space where he used to be. She watches the space and slowly pulls a sobriety potion out of the pocket of her pinstriped trousers.

She sips it thoughtfully.

And then she watches the space where he used to be some more. She isn't sure why.

And then she knows. She stands and makes her way through the slowly growing crowd and shoves a drunk (_has desperate eyes_) kid out of the way and picks up her notebook. A few of its pages are ripped from being tossed and trodden on.

Her pen is somehow still behind her ear.

She writes.

She spends the entire night writing in Remy's, surrounded by drunks and incredibly focused. She only looks up when the bartender kicks everyone out around sunrise.

She makes it to her flat and falls into bed naked. She sleeps immediately.

When Ginny wakes up, she takes a shower. The hot water is something she has always had a bit of a love affair with. She and showers consistently have a very dependable and happy relationship. When she gets out, she spends about twenty minutes using the mirror.

When she exits the bathroom, her hair is brown.

She writes.

. ... .

_And she looked at her left hand and saw beauty that didn't matter in delicate strength. Short nails, a tracery of bone under the skin. Strong fingers and a shapely palm that dipped into the wrist._

_Didn't matter. Brightness and beauty did not fit, and she did not imagine his fingertips burning their way across every cell that she consisted of._

. ... .

The light outside is a wash of gray, nothing more or less than twilight. She looks at her clock (that has no horrible fates writ in scrolling script or dearly loved names etched into its bare two hands) and sees that she is wrong.

It is not twilight. It is morning. The next morning, she thinks but isn't sure of. She does not know when the world turned again, but that is not such a surprise.

She stares at the bright gray square that is her window and abruptly abandons her typewriter. The peeling maroon door slams in the silence of the flat, and a black scarf and bowler hat are no longer in their place in the entryway. There is a pop as she crosses the boundary of her anti-Apparition ward.

Ginny reappears at the cafe.

The cafe is a hidden one. Very few know that there is a courtyard hidden by decrepit brick apartment buildings. There are even a few trees growing a ceiling above old wrought iron tables and chairs, and Birds of Paradise stretch orange and navy and yellow and green and red out of the small flowerbeds, straining in their last days of bloom. It is run by a sad young woman. Ginny likes the place. Likes the quiet.

She buys a double shot of espresso and two coffees to go. She tosses back the espresso before Disapparating.

To Hogsmeade.

There is a clenching in her throat and a restlessness in her fingertips as she strides through the village, coffees in hand. Her slightly red eyes burn in the silvery light of the gray gray gray sky, and she pauses for a moment to conjure a pair of sunglasses. (She does not give a flying fuck about muggle affectations. She lives in both worlds, in any case.)

And up the path to Hogwarts, brown-not-red hair whipping around her face in the wind.

She has not come here since she graduated. It was shut down for a few years, she heard - a couple of the battles she was never allowed to participate in happened on the castle grounds, and funding was apparently hit-and-miss chancery in the face of all of the damage.

The first thing she thinks as she strides through the castle gates is: _Different._ And it is. They are small differences, like someone tried very hard to glue a vase back together but was missing a few of the pieces and wasn't very sure that half of the shards weren't from another broken vase anyway. It is the small things - new stone, missing statues, young trees, new greenhouses in different locations. She is certain that when she enters the building proper, half of the paintings will be different.

She knows that this is not her school. Does not give a rat's arse. Instead, she sweeps steadily and stubbornly across the vast and empty grounds, making her way to the castle. And she realizes that classes are probably in session. That Snape is probably teaching.

Does not give a rat's arse yet again. (Hey, this could be the start of a whole new trend, hm? Ginny is not used to not-caring. She is used to caring too much, incapable of simply letting go. The frustration and fury and bitterbitterbitterness is part of her like her hair is, and none of her fits together the right way.)

The enormous (fairly new, not yet worn by countless pushing hands, she notices) double doors swing open at her touch. She checks the coffees, which have grown cold over the course of her travels, and taps the cups with her wand to heat them.

No one is in the halls. No one stops her. She almost expects someone to pop up and ask what she is doing here - this school is not her school not her school not her Hogwarts. This is not where she had her first kiss and her first near-death experience and her first - her firsts. This is not hers.

Ginny feels a comfortable surge of bitterness at the thought. Her boots thump their way to the dungeons, and still no one conveniently runs into her - _Oh, won't you have a cup of tea in my office? Right this way, m'dear _- and she remembers that Dumbledore is long dead in the war in the war in the war. Who is headmaster now?

She shrugs off the question because she has arrived at Snape's old classroom. Telling by the subdued noise coming from the other side of the heavy dungeon door, he still teaches here.

She pushes open the door. No one notices except Snape, who looks up expressionlessly.

_She hates that. _She hates that so much. She wants to steal his blankness and see fury and bitterbitterbitterness there again - wants to break his composure and his cheeky _not-fucking-caring._

She smiles (like something knifing through the water) and lets the door bang shut. The students look up with a jerk. It is a class of Gryffindors and Slytherins. She smiles again, too sweet this time and with strangeness in her eyes that makes people uneasy.

She starts by saying hullo. Like this: "Hullo, Ace."

"Miss Weasley," he says in acknowledgment, now rifling through an ancient-looking text. "Mr. Prine, if you insist on exploding your potion, do be sure to leave out the shredded asphodel sitting with abandonment issues on your cutting board."

A Gryffindor flushes and momentarily turns his attention back to his cauldron.

"Would you like a coffee?" Ginny asks.

"I suppose it should perhaps be mentioned that distracting a large class of already inept teenagers who are in possession of explosive ingredients is in some people's view not a wise thing, Miss Weasley. Miss Waldorf, I think you will find the addition of forget-me-not petals at this stage to be somewhat disastrous." A runty Slytherin girl jerks her hand back and glowers sullenly.

"What can I say? I'm not too wise. Take the bleeding coffee."

Snape finally looks at her straight on and stops flipping through the old grimoire. "And how may I help you?"

"By taking the coffee. Also, by talking to me. You weren't a hallucination? You were in the bar?"

She has the class's attention now. Snape seems mildly exasperated. "Remy's. Yes. What of it? Jones, don't even think about it."

Ginny ignores the aside. "Well, I thought I could get your opinion on my hair."

"Hm."

"I thought so too. Isn't it grand?" She marches over to him and shoves the cup of coffee in front of his face. "Take it."

He looks at the hot beverage inches from his nose as if he does not know what it is. "I believe I shall pass."

_She hates that. _She hates that so much. She wants to steal his blankness and see fury and bitterbitterbitterness there again - wants to break his composure and his cheeky _not-fucking-caring. _She slowly and precisely sets the extra coffee on a nearby desk, carefully not trembling. "I see. Did you ever shag James?"

The classroom is more silent than Harry when she used to try to get him to talk about his feelings. Snape smiles at her pleasantly.

She_ hates _that_. _He is so blank and she hates that he still isn't himself - and it has nothing to do with her hopes of being _herself_ again. Nothing at all. (But it does, just a tad - he is in front of her and not hanging on to the past anymore, but she doesn't think that she wants to be so blank blank blank. There has to be another way, a way to turn back into the girl she once was.)

"Why do you ask?"

"Just something that occurred to me as incredibly hilarious and ironic."

Still smiling, he answers, "Add clover extract before your potion turns to sludge, Mr. Pringle." Pringle does not move, as enraptured and horrified as everyone else by this interaction.

"So?" she asks, edges grating against edges, as casually sharp as scissors.

He waves a hand dismissively. "He wasn't anything worth having. It was about hatred, you know. But you do know - you know hatred very well. You know hatred almost as well as I did, though you don't have any particular focus. That's wasteful, Miss Weasley. If you're going to do it, you should do it right."

Ginny ignores this like she ignores her words that he has stolen. "Did you think about Lily while you did it?"

Snape sighs at this. "Miss Weasley, you do realize at I'm going to have to Obliviate this entire class now? And, yes, we both did."

There is a slight hissing in the silence as Pringle's potion begins eating through his cauldron.

"Why won't you snap?" she finally asks with frustration constricting her throat. She is always so frustrated, and here she is, failing to push it back yet again.

His dark, blank eyes seem to sharpen and settle at this. "Oh," he says. "That is what you want."

There is tension in her every muscle, rigid and tight, and there is pain knotting in her neck and head and maybe she should have slept before she came here. When did she last sleep? She takes a gulp of her coffee. "Yes. You don't want the coffee? It is terribly bitter."

"You will prod every wrong scar that has long since been sheared away," Snape murmurs.

"And I will do it very skillfully. You may as well not bother Obliviating them - I shall be staying for the rest of the day, and many people will probably hear many things."

"At least you aren't on hallucinogens this time."

The class is watching them with wide eyes and perceptibly open mouths.

"Not this time," she agrees. "But you will find that it makes not one whit of difference, Ace."

He tilts his head slightly. "You speak strangely now. Not that I remember you saying anything worth listening to during the war."

She laughs mockingly sharply raucously - and bows, sweeping off her bowler hat. "Ginevra Weasley, writer. At your inconvenience."

Snape sighs again. "A writer. Of course. Why?"

"I suppose there's something about lying and getting paid for it that appeals to me."

Snape seems to finally notice their audience. He says to them casually, "And this is a prime example of why you should never fall in love with a hero - you go a bit mad. Dismissed, everyone. Bring a vial of your potion to my desk, as always. Mr. Pringle, stay behind to arrange your detention." The boy's twisted cauldron and cement-like potion disappear with a careless wave of the professor's wand.

The students look between him and her before jerking into movement. Ginny watches them scurry with lazy-lidded eyes.

"You know, Ace," she says conversationally, "I find myself to be curious in the worst sort of way about you."

"What, exactly," he returns idly, charming the rapidly growing pile of vials on his desk to be unbreakable, "is the worst sort of way?"

"Just wondering if sex is always sado-masochistic with you or if you've ever managed something worth having."

A Gryffindor girl turning in her potion twitches and blushes before flitting off. Snape is still, and for a moment Ginny thinks that she has scraped the right nerve. But she hasn't.

"Miss Weasley, do you have to scar the children?" he asks tiredly. "Their minds barely function anyway, and they don't need mental trauma to lower their intelligence level even more. I don't think I could bear it."

She smirks at this and sinks into silence as Snape sets up Pringle's detention.

Ginny follows the man around for the rest of the day, and it is only midway through dinner in the Great Hall when she stands to leave. She has not talked to anyone but Snape the entire time, and her old professors look at her very guardedly, like she frightens them. McGonagall keeps staring at her, unable to believe one of her old Gryffindors - one of her beloved Weasleys - has turned into Ginevra Weasley, brunette writer. The faculty relaxes when they see her preparing to leave (with her vicious tongue and questions that Snape just won't stop answering baldly), but they relax too soon.

She stands, you see, and she looks down at Snape's relaxed form as he eats languidly, still not bothered by her biting words.

She decides to try something else. She looks down and eventually he looks up, and she bends over and holds his face with her hands and she kisses him.

He does not respond, but she continues kissing him anyway. The entire Great Hall is quiet. (Ginevra Weasley brings horrified silence wherever she goes.) Five seconds later, maybe, she pulls back and pats his head.

"Ta, Ace."

She walks easily through the whispering and gossiping Great Hall, ignoring the new headmaster's stuttering protests. Ginny has found the him to be a weak and unremarkable man, and she didn't bother to remember his name when he was introduced and doesn't bother now to listen to his reprimands.

She leaves leaves leaves.

When Ginny returns to her flat, she considers her soft, pillow-drowned bed. And then she decides that the bed will always be there but the words - the deceitful, intricate trap she is writing to break hearts - will not be.

She uses her typewriter like a lover, round after round and time is inconsistent.

She wakes up and does not know what day it is. She is not surprised. After showering, she leaves her flat. This time she wears a robe spelled against the cold in addition to her pinstriped trousers and bowler hat and scarf. She carries nothing but her shrunken typewriter and wand in her pockets.

The peeling maroon door locks itself behind her, and she makes her way to Snape and Hogwarts and everything that she is after but will not name even in her own head.

. ... .

"Cheers, Ace," she says when he opens his office door to her peach complexion and brown-not-bright hair. "I'll be living here for a while."

He lets her brush by him without a word, somewhat to Ginny's disappointment. But it is okay that his eyes aren't crackling with terrifying fury and his firm, thin lips aren't twisted into a sneer as they form blistering words.

She has a lot of time to work on him, after all, and she isn't disappointed.

She tells herself this when all Snape does is return to his desk and resume grading essays without a second glance her way.

(But minutes later, after Ginny has found the secret passageway to his quarters and he is alone with his red - _like her hair is no longer_ - ink and misspelled essays, he does murmur: "Watch out for the traps." And if there is a faint smirk on his lips as he scrawls away, she is not there to crow in victory and call him Ace.)

And this is Ginny and this is Snape and this is them failing to communicate even though they never lie. This is Ginny asking all the wrong questions and Snape telling all the wrong answers, and maybe there should be Something There but there isn't.

There isn't.

This is a morning. It is maybe a couple of weeks later - or perhaps a month year decade century, but Ginny has long since lost her handle on time. (She doesn't like clocks. They tick tick tick and tell her that Dad and Fred and Charlie and Mum and Ron are dead - tick tock tick who is next.) This is a morning and here is Ginny sitting with her legs propped up in an ancient wooden chair in Snape's small kitchen. She is wearing one of Snape's shirts and a pair of woolen socks and nothing else - mostly because she knows that Snape will say nothing to her about it. Her typewriter is perched on her lap, and the clacking of the keys is loud in the silence of Snape's apartments.

And Snape walks in.

Ginny has found that the man is actually a faithful caffeine addict and was just being obnoxious by not accepting her coffee that day in the dungeons. In her time here, she has taken great pleasure in obstructing his way to his first cup of coffee.

But today - today she writing, and she does not bother to jinx the coffee maker. In fact, she does not look up at all.

Snape's face is blank as he sets the pot on, but his shoulders are infinitesimally more relaxed now that he knows Ginny isn't going to give him any trouble. Coffee drips and the typewriter clacks away and maybe this is a kind of peace. And Ginny knows that Snape isn't going to - say or do anything she should guard against. Well, she knows in the small part of her brain that isn't dreamily and wickedly relaying the story.

Snape reads the paper and drinks his coffee; she does not react. He leaves, and she does not stop him. Before he goes, he fixes her a mug.

And maybe Snape is slowly softening her.

. ... .

Of course, the soft times never last (even if they really weren't very soft at all, just slightly less biting) and here is the reason why.

It is Christmas Holidays. She has been living in Snape's quarters for a long time (maybe two months) and has softened and dulled her edge only in a minuscule way, but it is enough for the misery to break through her guard. _Fucking Christmas_, and let us count the dead who are not here.

(She is not over it. She still has not figured out how exactly to go about doing such a thing, and maybe the reason she rips Snape apart is that she is testing whether he truly is past it all - testing whether he can teach her how to get over death and betrayal and hate and distance and all the things that she can't even look at or put a label to.)

She does not cry. What she does is -

She leaves. Without a word or a note or a mention to anyone, she leaves.

She goes to Remy's, the usual dive, and she hasn't been here since the night she ran into Snape. She doesn't care, and when the bartender looks like he is going to say something about her absence, she glares at him. The big man raises his arms conciliatorily and places two bottles in front of her without her even having to ask.

One is Jagermeister. The other is a Delia Potion.

She looks and looks (looking for something that is not there), and then she grasps the Delia. It is gone in a trice, a flutter of tastes in the air and sweeping purple waves across her vision.

It is not enough.

_It isn't enough. _She can still remember vividly Charlie's strong, scarred arms as he gave her an easy half-hug and laughed at her worry. She can still feel Fred's hand in her hair as he tousled it teasingly - _Gin-gin_ - and it is not -

This is not enough. It never is. The pint of Jager is half-empty and the bar is spinning and it is not fucking enough.

"Ace," she slurstutters at the bartender, "gimme a fuckin' - fuckin' Shine."

He looks at her for a moment - at her strange not-red hair - and another bottle appears on the bar.

Her mouth forms something that is somewhat similar to a smile and closes around the neck of the vial; the contents are thick and gritty all the way down. Particles feel like they are sticking to her tongue and teeth, but then her mouth goes numb and her pupils dilate and the world feel like an unending orgasm. She moans with it loudly and breathlessly, lolling in her stool. A man looks her way.

He is handsome, in a manner of speaking. There is a scar stretching across his sharp right cheekbone and his eyes are so dark as to almost be pure black. His hair is thick. She runs her fingers through it (when did he get that close? she is bad with time) and moans again as she feels every separate hair caress the palm of her hand. Beauty beauty beauty - she sees beauty in front of her and has to touch it.

So she does.

"Beauty," she tells him with a sensual, lazy smile as the world spins. "Beauty, let's shag."

He is looking at her like he wants to very badly but is refraining. "Red - "

"Don't call me that."

"Fucking whatever - that's just what you told me to call you. Kid, I think that maybe you should head home."

She laughs, sharp and shattered glass. "I would get the one guy in this bar with a modicum of honor. Blow that for a lark and _fuck me_."

As she says this, she rolls her hips into his and pulls his face closer with her arms wrapped around his neck and moans as she traces his scar with her tongue. The man chokes out a groan and lets himself be kissed. After a minute of her skillful administrations, he groans again and seizes her hips with strong hands and lifts her out of her stool as they devour each other. She locks her legs around his waist with some difficulty and trails her mouth down his neck as he moves them through the bar. She bites the junction between his neck and his shoulder, and he makes a strange noise and staggers and slams them against the wall beside the door. He ravages her mouth, and she can feel his erection through his robe like she is sitting on it.

And then she hears a voice. The sound of it makes her moan - it is smooth like silk and hard like Ginny and positively freezing with leashed fury.

"Ginevra."

She throws her head back, hitting the wall with a _thunk_, and moans again as the man she has picked up kisses her throat. She gasps out, "Ngh. H-hey, Ace. _Ah!_"

And then her arse is meeting the floor and her man is gone, and standing over her in all of his dark magnificence is Snape. She looks up at him and smiles soporifically.

"Ace, where'd Beauty go?" She doesn't care. She just wants to hear that voice again.

"Away. Stand up."

She breathes throatily at the sound and hears another moan issuing from her mouth. "I - I don't think I can."

The floor is filthy cement. She explores it blindly with her fingers and tries to grab it, tries to crumble a chunk of the incredible texture with her bare hands.

And then the floor is no longer there. She is standing and Snape has a strong grip on her arm, and he is dragging her out of the door. She trips at the too-fast pace and falls into Snape, feels the course fabric of the white linen shirt he always wears under his robes. He must have been in a hurry when he realized she was missing, but she doesn't register this - she is breathless with joy and arousal, breathless on Shine. She steadies herself and leans in to kiss him.

"Stop," he hisses. He finally looks her straight in the face, and his eyes are crackling with terrifying fury and his firm, thin lips are twisted into a sneer.

"No," she replies, voice thick with want, and she manages to reach his mouth.

He is unmoving and stiff and tense beneath her lips, but then there is a snarling noise and she is slammed against the brick wall of the bar. _Snape kisses her back_.

Snape kisses her like it is the only thing in the world to do, like she and he and this cold, trashy sidewalk are the only things that matter. He kisses her like -

And she twines a hand through his hair and kisses back just as passionately. They rock back and forth urgently, each trying for the upper hand until Severus wins and she is pinned against the wall yet again. She uses her free hand to fumble his trousers open, and then his long, deft (piano) fingers are undoing hers. Her slacks hit the ground, and she kicks them off over her flats and doesn't feel the cold.

He rips her knickers quickly and thoroughly and hoists her up and then he is inside of her, so large and hard and hot and she has wanted this for a while now. She tightens her legs around his waist (and it feels so right, clicks in a way that it didn't with Beauty) and they move move move the world as he pins her to the wall.

The orgasm is incredible. Her vision goes white and every single muscle in her body melts. She thinks she hears a scream over the roaring in her ears, but her mind is incapable of recognizing anything at all. Her blood is burning as it thrums in her veins, and then everything goes numb and black and she is unconscious.

This is why the soft times never last. This is why: because Ginny wakes up the next morning and it can barely even be called morning - the light is glowing gray and mocking, and she does not know why there is any light in the first place. Snape's apartments don't have windows, after all.

And then she realizes that she is in an unfamiliar room - in the castle. She sits up and takes stock; she is wearing all of her clothes, but she is missing her knickers and her shoes are sitting beside her bed. There are a few empty potion vials sitting on the unfamiliar bedside table, and she is alone.

This is when she remembers everything. She remains upright for about a minute, and then she slowly lies back down and curls up and closes her eyes and doesn't cry. (This is why: she is alone. She never expected anything else, but she wishes sometimes that she wouldn't always be right about people. She wishes sometimes that someone would surprise her.)

It is five hours later when Ginny uncurls. She has not fallen asleep; she has been very skillfully not thinking about anything at all. She has had a staring marathon. First she stared at the pale blue of the sheets pooling around her, pacing herself, and when that grew too dull she stared at the wall for a time. Sprint staring. After she knew the wall (all the dips and ridges and hollows and crevices in the ancient stone) better than her own face, she moved on to doing some hardcore staring at the curtains, long distance and short distance.

But it is time for her to get up, and she uncurls and sits up and swings her feet off of the bed and stands. It is all done rather stiffly, but she does it, and she leaves the chamber as it is.

The door clicks shut quietly behind her.

. ... .

She reaches Snape's quarters without incident. He is not there, but she didn't expect him to be and is unsurprised. She heads to the shower and her hot water. The burn of the almost boiling spray is soothing. She doesn't have a hangover to speak of thanks to the preventative potions Snape evidently gave her, but she always feels less chaotic in the water.

When she gets out an hour later, Snape is sitting in his living room, reading a potions journal.

"Best wishes," he says without looking up. His voice is even and pleasant.

"What?" she finds herself saying, out of place and still catching up.

"It is Christmas, Miss Weasley."

"Oh." She is feeling blank and numb - and she has succeeded in cracking his blankness in half, but he has returned to it skillfully and she almost wishes that she never managed it. (She wishes that she wasn't right about him - wishes that he had surprised her.)

There is silence in the room, and Snape turns a page in his journal. She turns on her heel and makes to leave his quarters.

(This is not the man who had sex with her last night - not the man who kissed her like it was the only thing in the world to do and she was the only thing in the world that mattered. This is not the man who groaned her name like a prayer, over and over and -

Not the man who made her lose herself.)

But she pauses at the door. She doesn't turn around when she asks, "What is the worst Christmas you have ever had?"

"This one," Snape replies to his journal.

"Never change," she says to the door, and she slips around it like a thief.

(And this is Ginny and this is Snape and this is them failing to communicate even though they never lie. This is Ginny asking all the wrong questions and Snape telling all the wrong answers, and maybe there should be Something There but there isn't.)

Ginny wanders the halls mindlessly. She is letting her head fall into place as much as it ever does, and she doesn't know how to write this. She doesn't know how to pour her own soul into her writing anymore - only others.

She doesn't know.

It is maybe an hour later when she runs into a pair of Gryffindor firsties heading to the Christmas lunch. She smiles smiles smiles and walks with them. (They chat on the way. She says - she says, "Kids, I am going to be frank because I rather like the pair of you. Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans quite obviously kick Chocolate Frog arse. What? Tch. Blow the collectible cards. Cards aren't worth anything. The risk of Bott's, on the other thumb, is thrill and adrenalin - and are the two of you Gryffindors or not? Buck up already and grow a pair. ...I heard that and, yes, mine are bigger than yours.")

There is only one table, as is usual for the hols. There are maybe thirty students and about eight faculty members, and the two firsties sit with the only other first year there, a small Hufflepuff girl - or maybe she isn't a firstie, but she is just as twerpy as one. Ginny estimates that the twitchy pair are out of hearing range and is disappointed. (No, she is glad - but she won't look at that.

She is glad, because when the feast starts, so does the metaphorical bloodshed.)

And this is the point - this is where they break apart, expected for a while and it has been too long since she first invaded Snape's life. This is the point. This is the point.

"So, Ace," she starts. "Did your old man slap your mum around?"

(She is starting off gently - considerately, even. There is skill in this.)

Snape smiles politely and Ginny feels nothing.

The man (who shagged her last night outside a bar - fucked her against the brick) replies, "Why do you even bother to ask? Of course he did. He raped her as well."

She nods affably. The professors around them are all talking very loudly and going a little quicker than usual on the alcohol, all in all trying very hard to drown this conversation out. This has become their instinctive reaction to seeing Snape and Ginny together.

"So when did he first hit you?"

"Oh, Miss Weasley." Snape chuckles like she has just told a good joke. (Even now it is strange to hear this sound coming out of his throat.) "You ask as though I was old enough to remember the first time."

"Well, I hope this next question is a bit less redundant then." She gives a little laugh too, so genial, and they are friends together, old pals. "When was the first time James bullied you?"

He pauses in his meal and looks thoughtful for a moment. "Hm," he mutters. "I suppose that would be - oh, about five minutes into our first train ride here. I was trying to shove my trunk into the ceiling compartment. He wandered in with Black and offered to help before kicking my legs out from under me. My trunk fell on top of me."

McGonagall is staring in horror. (This is her disillusionment; here are her Gryffindors, and here are their sins flashing red and gold.)

"My," Ginny says ingenuously, "I'm sure that was mildly painful."

Snape dismisses her. "It was nothing. A broken nose, a mild concussion, some bruises - I had some potions that I had been brewing since I was a child to heal the damage from my father. No one noticed."

"Did your father ever touch you inappropriately?" Ginny is the very picture of polite attentiveness as she cuts her roasted duck delicately. (But the knife grates against the gold plate.)

Snape laughs at this. "No, no. The only thing worse than magic to Tobias was a poufter."

"Do you think that's why you fucked James?"

There are several choking sounds from around them. Evidently the professors never heard the rumors from Ginny's first visit to Hogwarts. And maybe she spoke a little more clearly and loudly than usual, but it isn't like it matters.

Snape ignores his colleagues and seems to consider this. "Oh, I suppose it was a small part of it. The rest of it, as you know, was Lily and hating him and hating myself and creating something worthless. We hurt each other terribly, but it was only physical and that was just fine, especially under the circumstances."

"What does physical pain mean to you?"

"Danger, mostly. Warning. Pleasure, sometimes."

Ginny grins like she is his friend - teases like she is his friend when she starts to say, "I knew you were sado-maso - "

"Do keep such opinions to yourself, Miss Weasley. Such insinuations are not seemly."

McGonagall is still staring, and her eyes are huge and she looks like she is about to break down. Her jaw is oscillating between being clenched as she fights back a tongue-lashing and dropping in utter disbelief over the fact that this is actually happening. She weakly chokes out, "_Seemly_?" but no one hears her in the rambunctious noise of the feast.

McGonagall is the only one foolish enough to not actively ignore every syllable that issues from either of their mouths.

Ginny is still grinning when these malicious words exit her mouth: "And why did James agree to this?"

There is a slight twitch in Snape's hand as he reaches for a roll. The words catch in his throat for only a split-second before he says, in a very good imitation of not being perturbed, "He found out that Lily was in love with and dating someone else. Someone - Lily didn't know he knew. No one else knew, certainly. He was going to taunt me about it to make himself feel better, but I had found out by chance long before he did."

"Oh, Ace," she sing-songs with a smile. "Here is a crack."

Snape looks at her, and here finally is a hint of a glare. "They are dead, Miss Weasley. Be silent."

"Who - "

His voice is very quiet when he cuts her off. "Show some respect for the dead, Miss Weasley. Sometimes they are turned into ideals. I see no reason to take someone's ideals away."

"...Whose ideals?"

"The world's, Miss Weasley."

Ginny snorts. The snort turns into laughter. And then she continues her interrupted question as if he has said nothing worth listening to. "Who was Lily fucking, Ace?"

And this is the point - this is where Ginny finds out if Snape has really let go. This is the point.

No one is paying any attention to them anymore. Even McGonagall has been startled out of her horrified fascination by Ginny's laughter, and now the woman is very determinedly chatting with Sprout about the newest developments in a transfigured horticulture study.

This is the point.

Snape is unreadable, carved from ivory and obsidian and shadow, inhuman in this second. His response is low and rough: "Do not ask this of me."

(He is remembering a chance meeting in the dungeons the better part of three decades ago - remembers walking vaguely in the direction of the hidden library behind the statue of Pangaea the Prosperous and running across a lost Lily. Beautiful Lily, and when he grabbed her shoulder - touching her one more time; one _last _time, because he simply could not help it - to lead her out of Slytherin territory, she flinched and stone walled him.

Underneath it was: _You cut your ties and chose your side and - and you _chose, _and what you chose was not me_.

When he left her on the second floor, he looked at the blood painting his hand redbrown - mudblood lily evans - as it was in the process of drying, seeping into the lines, and he -

He had chosen. Blood-drenched robes were none of his business.)

At these words, Ginny abruptly removes her intent focus from him. She is detached now and almost looks normal as she serves herself bread pudding.

She is used to always being right about people. _She has really been hoping he would be the one to prove her wrong_, but she is used to always being right about people. In this strange contest where they have endeavored to see if they would run out of either questions or answers first, Ginny has won. Technically.

The silence between them is nearly peaceful, and it lasts for most of dessert.

But not all of it. (And this is an ending.)

"One last question, Ace," she tells him sweetly, placing one last bite of pudding in her mouth and swallowing. "Have you ever raped anyone?"

Her words are caught in the void left by a lull in conversation. The tension in the Hall ratchets up incredibly quickly. The younger students look gobsmacked, and everyone endeavors to look as though they aren't listening at all while simultaneously making the least amount of noise they can.

Snape smiles (like a stranger, and maybe he is one - maybe she knows nothing despite asking all the wrong questions and getting back all the wrong answers, despite _doing it all wrong_) and smoothly replies, "Do you think the Death Eaters were a tea society?"

It is an answer that outright says nothing but really says everything, and Ginny nods thoughtfully as she takes a sip of mulled wine.

And then she stands and she smiles at everyone and she leaves leaves leaves.

They watch her go. McGonagall stares at her once-student's back, and then she hisses something under her breath and hurriedly follows.

. ... .

"Why does he keep answering you?" McGonagall asks after she catches up with Ginny outside the Hall. Her face is tight and her lips are thin with protests unsaid. She does not understand them, and she does not know that Ginny has found a question that Snape refuses to answer. (He still has a thin thread connecting him to Lily, still loves her if only a little bit, and his uncaring is therefore fractionally false. And maybe Ginny is being too exacting, but this is unacceptable.)

Ginny barely glances at her.

"That is not even a question. Come up with a new one," she replies dismissively. "A better one."

McGonagall tries again. "Why does he tell the truth?"

"What makes you think he does?"

"Because - " And the old woman (yes, she is much older now than Ginny remembers her, with her strict bun shot through with grey and deeper wrinkles around her mouth and eyes) flushes like a child.

"You don't understand us, Madam Unrequited Love," Ginny tells her, finally halting her loose stride. "Don't even try."

McGonagall flinches back. "What? I - I don't know what you're talking about - "

"Yes, you do. You were in love with him for decades. But he wasn't interested, was he."

"What? I - " The old woman is hunched in on herself and backtracking, looking for a way to escape.

But Ginny is relentless. She is so very good at listening to life (to the beat beat beat dance one two three) and regurgitating it onto her typewriter, and the tale of Dumbledore and McGonagall is one of the basics. "And he was the reason you became a professor - so you could stay close to him. Because he batted for the other team, but it was very convenient how it seemed to be a known secret that the two of you were together. Really, McGonagall - you, a beard? Who would believe it?"

The professor's face seems to gain another ten years. "Stop," she whispers.

Ginny doesn't obey. "I almost find it hard to believe, myself. Strong, independent Minerva McGonagall, so desperately in love with a man that she shaped her whole life for a pat on the head and a twinkly acknowledgment by way of tea. Did anyone figure it out?"

"No," the Scot says a moment later. She closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, Ginny is still there - still watching her (like a cat with a mouse like any stereotypical predator who knows that they have already won in all of the ways that matter).

And Ginny's next words are almost kind - or are pretending to be. "You poor thing. You don't understand anything."

McGonagall flinches again, and then Ginny is gone in a sweep of robes.

"You have the most terrifying skill with painful questions," the old woman tells the empty hallway in a hollow voice.

There is no answer.

McGonagall does not see Ginny at dinner that night. Or any other meal, actually, because Ginny has left.

. ... .

(Ginny is used to always being right about people. _She had really been hoping he would be the one to prove her wrong_, but she is used to always being right about people. There is no reason for her to stay, now. There is no reason for her to stay.

So she leaves.)

. ... .

The week after her departure from Hogwarts is a blur of paper and _clack-clack-clackety _and starkly clean type. She sets an alarm on her wand (she still can barely abide looking at clocks) and makes sure not to miss New Year's Eve.

Before she leaves for Remy's on December 31st, she fingers her wand in the bathroom and looks at her reflection. She removes the spell from her hair with a word because trying to make the incongruous brightness fit - trying to make anything fit at all - is an exercise in pointlessness. She removes the spell from her hair and does not look in the mirror to see the red.

Later in the night, Ginny has sex with a man. She is fucked against the brick wall of the bar with her skirt around her hips and her open robe the only thing upholding a pretense of modesty, and there are people milling around this time but she doesn't care. She bites the nameless man's shoulder to stifle her moans, and if she catches a glimpse of Snape in the crowd over the man's shoulder, she writes it off as a hallucination and doesn't see him for the rest of the night.

(It has to be a hallucination. Ginny has not just destroyed any chance of them - Snape did not come to Remy's to find her. She has not just destroyed their last chance - she _hasn't_ because Snape outside Remy's is only a hallucination. This hallucination is brief and she doesn't talk with it, too busy being impaled by a man whose name she has forgotten and proving her false indifference to Snape's rejection.

This is what has definitely not just happened: Snape has not come to her with hat in hand only to see her at this, the worst of moments. That isn't the way these things go. In films and books, no one ever really fucks up the expected happy ending. Ergo: _hallucination._)

The sex doesn't make her feel anything other than a vague sense of pleasure.

When she realizes that it is the New Year (an hour late; she isn't good with time), she kisses the bartender and -

She gets a little caught up in the kiss before ending it thoughtfully. The bartender looks away at her scrutiny and she walks off without remembering to wish him a good year. (Later later later - in another book - the main character and her bartending lover end up shagging against the bar while the customers on the other side of it yell at them for drinks. It is good sex, and they take shots of Lethe while they fuck each other breathless and sweaty.)

Ginny leaves Remy's about an hour before dawn and Apparates to the cafe's empty courtyard. She is drunk enough that she has come out the other end of the spectrum as nearly sober, and she needs needs needs some beauty.

The wrought iron chair is cold through her thin, slinky, spangled robe and freezing against her miniskirt-clad legs. The breeze is like fire against the skin bared by her low-cut shirt. Ginny closes her eyes and breathes ice into her lungs. Turns her head and feels a curl brush her cheek.

There is no need for her to open her eyes again to see the red. She knows it intimately, just like she knows all of her little ironies and tragedies and -

She can't let go. It - a vague amalgamation that means _EVERYTHING THAT HURTS -_ is a part of her now, and she isn't capable of simply letting go. The frustration and fury and bitterbitterbitterness are like her hair (she could try to hide it but it wouldn't change anything), and none of her fits together the right way.

She thinks _You were nothing worth having _and doesn't know who she means.

This is.

This is Ginny.

This is.

This is Ginny and this is Severus and this is how they did it all wrong.

* * *

**A/N: **So this a requested piece by AlinaLotus. Ginny/Snape. I haven't written much Harry Potter lately, but this idea really intrigued me. I'm very interested in what everyone thinks, so I'd really appreciate it if you would take a moment to give me feedback. (smiles hopefully)

As a one-time-only resurrection, feel free to guess the title meaning - you get a request if you get it right.

The Lily/Snape history in this story sneaked out of my other work, _your ZEN is false_. If you feel the need for answers tickling you, do check it out. I think a new 'verse is trying to birth itself. I'll attempt to resist. Also, this is obviously AU.


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